Christopher Weinberger

Executive Director

Christopher Weinberger, a Professor of Comparative and World Literature, is the executive director of the Dilena Takeyama Center for the Study of Japan and Japanese Culture.

Professor Weinberger earned a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from U.C. Berkeley in 2010, where he specialized in Japanese prose fiction and literary criticism of the 19th and 20th centuries and comparative criticism. His current research examines some of the different frameworks for valuing literature that have developed in Japanese and Anglophone literary traditions. In particular, Weinberger focuses on the various ways that writers, critics, and theorists of the novel have invoked ethics as a measure of novel value.

He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Imaginary Worlds and Real Ethics: Case Studies in Japanese Literature. It deals with the work of major Japanese authors Mori Ōgai (1862-1992), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927), and Murakami Haruki (1949--). He has published in journals including Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Narrative, Representations, and positions: asia critique.